by James Jones
Mast had already noted at evening chow that something had happened between Winstock and O’Brien. Winstock was still wearing the pistol, and it took only a few minutes to see that neither of them was speaking to the other. Lately, and for about a week before Winstock had pulled his lying, cheating, dishonest trick, the two men had been very chummy. But now whenever one of them said anything to anyone, the other always carefully turned his back or happened to be looking another way.
It was not hard to figure out that their coldness had something to do with the pistol. Mast suspected, from the way they’d had their heads together talking all the time for days, that O’Brien may have been in part responsible for the plot as to how to get it away from him. Possibly O’Brien had been going to buy it from Winstock after he got it, or more likely, since O’Brien was reputedly broke, he was to be given it in return for some favor or other. Only now that Winstock had it he was keeping it for himself. It had to be something of this sort.
The guitar session broke up soon, because once it was dark no more smoking was allowed out in the open. It was this that Mast had been waiting for. When Winstock, laughing and talking and with Mast’s pistol jouncing securely on his hip, left the group and went off up the hill toward his own home hole the number five hole, Mast waited a few seconds and then got up and followed him, aware of O’Brien’s pale green eyes, following him. He might not be able to whip O’Brien, but he was sure he could beat up Winstock.
“Winstock!” he called, climbing after him.
Other men were leaving the group too, spreading off toward their home holes or to get their blankets and go wherever it was they slept, some going down and some of them coming up this way through the deepening red dusk. So while Mast and Winstock were out of earshot they still were not strictly alone and out of sight. Mast made a mental note of this. Here would not be the place to fight him, where the court-martial offense could be seen.
“Well! Hello, Mast,” Corporal Winstock said in a friendly way. He was standing a little above Mast, up the hill, on an outcropping. “Ain’t seen you around in quite a spell. Not since they bust up our little detail, in fack.”
Mast simply stood, staring at him unbelievingly. Such lack of guilt seemed impossible.
“Well, what can I do for you, Mast?” Winstock said cheerfully. “Did you want somethin’?”
“What can you do for me? I want my pistol back. That’s what you can do for me.”
“You want what?” Winstock said, his eyebrows going up.
“I said I want my pistol back. And I want it back right now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Winstock said cheerfully. Through the deepening, almost blood-red dusk that was now nearly full night, he stared at Mast narrowly with his narrow little face.
“You don’t ’hunh?” Mast said grimly. “Do you deny that you took my pistol away from me—on your authority as a corporal—to turn in to the supply room?”
“What?” Winstock said cheerfully. “Oh, that. Sure. Sure I did. I told you I was sorry I had to do it. What more can I say? And why the hell should I deny it?”
“Do you deny that that pistol you’re wearing right now is the same pistol you took away from me?”
“Why, hell yes! Hell yes I deny it!” Winstock said, looking both indignant and surprised. “Oh, I see what’s bothering you. You think this here pistol is the same one I taken off of you, and that I kep’ it instead of turning it in like I said.” He shook his head somberly. “That’s a hell of a thing to accuse a man of, Mast, that’s all.”
“It just happens that I happen to know the serial number of that pistol I had,” Mast said, boring on grimly. “I memorized it. Do you want to let me look at this pistol and check its serial number?”
Shocked indignation flashed over Winstock’s face. “Why, hell no! Who the hell are you? To be checkin’ on me? You got no authority over me. You’ll just have to take my word for it that this ain’t your pistol, Mast.”
“Then where did you get it?” Mast demanded.
“It’s none of your business where I got it,” Winstock said, calm and cheerful once again. “But for your information, I bought it.”
“Bought it!” Mast jeered. “Where could you buy a pistol locked up on this beach position?”
“I bought it today off one of them engineer guys across the road.”
“How could you buy it today when I saw it on you bright and early this morning?”
“I bought it yesterday,” Winstock said unflinchingly.
Mast paused. He knew he was right, it was his pistol, he knew it, but from somewhere an element of doubt, a thought that Winstock might be telling the truth, might actually have turned Mast’s pistol in and bought this other one from an engineer, had seeped into his mind. Winstock looked so truthful. It emasculated Mast’s righteousness. And the element of doubt increased his already precipitate desperation.
“I could punch you in the head, Winstock,” he said recklessly, “and take it away from you and see the serial number for myself.”
“That’s a court-martial offense,” Winstock said immediately. “You’d be a fool to do it.” He looked around through the swiftly falling night and nodded. “All these guys around to see it.”
“I can wait till I get you by yourself.”
“Ha!” Winstock laughed, throwing back his head. “How you gonna ever get anybody by themself on this damn beach position? There’s only four hundred yards of it.”
Salvation! Salvation! Be saved! To be saved! The hope of survival! These words were running themselves over and over through Mast’s mind, a sort of documentary commentary in a professional announcer’s voice to his private movie of the Jap officer severing his body, as he stared at the man who had taken this salvation from him. For a desperate moment he thought of telling him the truth about how he had come into possession of the pistol, that there was a record of it after all. Then he thought of Musso’s endorsing visit, which proved the pistol his, and once again the face of the man from the 8th Field, from whom he had not bought it, rose up in his mind’s eye to confirm. He couldn’t tell him. To do that would be to lose the pistol forever.
“Look, Winstock,” he said flippantly. “I want to ask you something. Just for the record. Between us two. How can you equate—”
“Equate?” Winstock asked.
“Equalize. How can you equalize to yourself, in your own mind, the fact that you took my pistol away from me because I had bought it off a guy, and went and turned it in; and then turned right around and went and bought one yourself? How can you explain that? I’d just like to know.”
“Well,” Winstock said calmly, “it’s easy. I just changed my mind, that’s all. After I took yours. I’m just sorry that I went and turned yours in before I changed my mind. It’s, tough on you.”
“Yeah,” Mast said. “Sure is. A good answer,” he said bitterly; “a fine answer.”
“Look, Mast,” Winstock said reasonably, and rested the heel of his palm possessively upon the object in question at his hip. “I want to explain somethin’ to you. It’s simple, and you should of saw it. With your education. But since you didn’t, I’ll explain it to you.
“How can you have a pistol? There ain’t no record of you ever havin’ no pistol. So how can you have one? You just never had a pistol. Don’t you see?
“Now this pistol here,” he wiggled his fingers without moving his palm from it, “is mine. I bought it, and it don’t have nothin’ to do with you at all. Besides, I need a pistol worse than you do. Or almost anybody. I’m a noncom. I’m second in command of a squad. I got people I got to look after. And who I got responsibilities to. That’s why I need a pistol. What would happen to all those other people if somethin’ happened to me? If the government knew what it was doin’ it would of issued me a pistol. Hell, we get in combat, the squad leader’ll probly be gone most of the time, if he ain’t killed already, and then I’ll have the whole squad to look after. Right?
“A
nd you know what that is, Mast. When you’re in command of a squad—or even second-in-command—you’re a target. That’s who those Jap officers with them Samurai sabers always go for first: the squad leader or assistant squad leader. You know that.
“This pistol,” Winstock said contentedly, drumming his fingers against the leather of the holster flap for Mast’s benefit without moving his palm from it, “this pistol might actually save my life someday, save me. You realize that? A pistol’s the best defense there is against those wacky sabers. I wouldn’t mind bein’ shot so much.
“Now do you see why I need this pistol more than you? Hell, time we get in combat, you’ll probly be workin’ in the orderly room anyway, Mast. With your education. So if you even did have a pistol once, which you didn’t, what would you need it for? Right?”
“I have no intention of ever working in the orderly room,” Mast said desperately.
“I don’t see how you can help it, Mast,” Winstock said emphatically, giving his head a slow shake. “With your education. Now go on home and leave me be and stop this crap. Right? I’m just sorry that I turned that pistol of yours in before I got mine and changed my mind, that’s all. But there’s nothin’ I can do about it for you now.” He nodded once, emphatically, and started off on up the hill, the heel of his palm still resting possessively on the pistol butt.
Mast stood quietly, although internally he was seething with desperation, looking after him, aware that his cause was hopeless and that Winstock was right. He could never prove he’d had the pistol. And if he could, what then? Who would he prove it to? And Winstock was also right about catching him alone and taking it from him by force: it would be impossible within the narrow confines of this beach position. Mast turned and started back down the hill toward where he kept his blankets beneath a rock outcropping. Strangely, neither of them this time had even mentioned the possibility of going to Sergeant Pender and turning the pistol in, as he and O’Brien had threatened each other. Both of them knew better. Obviously there was only one thing left to do. If he wanted his pistol back at all, ever, there was only one way left to get it. He would have to steal it back. As he passed by the number two hole, O’Brien was still waiting there and Mast as he went on was aware of those pale green eyes following him searchingly and in silence. O’Brien of course could see he wasn’t wearing it.
Once he had made up his mind to steal it back, Mast went about it thoroughly and intelligently. But he had some trouble in making up his mind. It was not a moral problem so much. It was the fact that he had to face and accept the possibility of the shame and public embarrassment of being caught. But in this case he had no other recourse. His first act, once he had made up his mind, was to go down into the number five hole, Winstock’s home hole, at four in the morning when he got off post and ‘case the joint,’ as it were. The two men on post at the guns were sitting staring blindly in the dark out through the apertures from which protruded the snub noses of the two .30-caliber watercooled, talking quietly to each other to keep awake. Mast chatted with them while he took in the rest of the place.
Corporal Winstock himself was sleeping, rolled up right next to the door on the right as you entered. There were four other sleepers scattered about the raw rock floor. Winstock’s head was toward the doorway at the foot of the steps cut into the solid rock, but he did not stir when Mast came in. His feet were toward the corner where in the gloom, lying right out in the open on top of a barracks bag which was apparently his, there was a rifle belt with a holstered pistol attached to it. Such fantastic luck was more than Mast had bargained for, and it partially unnerved him.
Among other things Mast noted that both men on post never turned around or took their eyes off the invisible night-black sea, even when they talked. It would have been easy just to pick up belt, holster, pistol and all and walk out with it, as far as those two were concerned. But Mast had come unprepared for such an easy-to-manage eventuality, he had prepared himself only for looking the place over. And he could not bring himself to make the fatal, conclusive movement of reaching out his arm. After chatting with them a while he got up and left.
Down below on the flat, where other men were sleeping out in the open in the wind as he did, Mast rolled up on the rocky ground and putting his shelterhalf over his head, smoked a cigarette. He should have done it while he was there, and what he ought to do now was go right back up there and get it. Winstock might not leave it out like that again. It was unbelievable that he had this time. Perhaps he didn’t know about the nocturnal attempts to steal it. Mast had never told anyone. But it took a while for him to steel himself to it. After a second cigarette, which he carefully stubbed out on the ground beside the first before uncovering his head, Mast unwrapped himself and started back up the hill.
It was ridiculously easy. One of the things that had bothered Mast was the problem of taking Winstock’s rifle belt. One of the least stolen items in the services everyone nonetheless had his name and serial number inked or stamped on the inside of his rifle belt. To take it also would be to invoke the question of truly stolen equipment, something the taking of the pistol would not do. Mast might throw it away, over the cliff, but the problem of stolen equipment would still exist, something Winstock could legitimately use, perhaps against Mast himself.
He solved it easily, and simply. He simply went down into the hole, mumbled something about being unable to sleep, a statement never in question around this rocky, windy, uncomfortable place, and then while he talked to the two sleepy men who talked back but nevertheless did not look around, proceeded to unhook the holstered pistol from Winstock’s belt, leaving the belt there, and attached it to his own. The magnitude of his own courage astounded him, as did the simple easiness of it. After putting his own belt back around his waist with the pistol on it, he removed the extra pistol clips from the pouch in Winstock’s belt and put them in his own. Then he said good night and went back down and rolled up again, his pistol at his hip again. It was that easy. And as he buttoned his shirt down over it in his waist belt and zippered up his field jacket, the feeling of comfort that it gave him, being there again, was indescribable. Mast felt saved again, had a chance to survive again. And to hell with Corporal Winstock. When he checked the serial number, as the still-unresolved element of doubt forced him to do, although he did not want to, he found that it was really his own pistol.
Next day when he saw Winstock, the little corporal looked at him hatefully but there was nevertheless in his glance, despite the hate, a measure of respect that had never been in his eyes before when he looked at Mast. Apparently Winstock had ascertained for himself just what had happened last night. Mast did not say anything to him, and he did not say anything to Mast. And in fact, after that, Mast and Winstock did not speak at all, except when necessary in line of duty, just as Mast and O’Brien did not speak. But O’Brien, while he and Mast still did not speak, nevertheless appeared to be pleased that Winstock had not gotten away with his double swindle of both himself and Mast.
When two or three men, following the evolutions of the pistol about the beach position with the interest of uninvolved observers, asked him about having it back, Mast merely said he had changed his mind and bought it back from Winstock.
If Winstock objected to this explanation, Mast did not hear of it.
Seven
THE LOADING OF THE demolition across the road caused a number of unanticipated changes in the lives of everyone at Makapoo. These changes were not immediately apparent, but they became increasingly clear as the days, and then the weeks, passed. Almost all of them were changes for the better.
The first change, which affected everybody on the position, and which also affected Mast and Mast’s pistol, occurred a little over a week after Mast stole his pistol back from Winstock. This was the creation of a permanent five-man detail from the beach position to serve as a roadguard for the now-loaded demolition.
The story behind the creation of this roadguard was a complex one. But it can be explai
ned easily with that phrase which has always done such excellent service in all the armies of the world: ‘Somebody’ screwed up. ‘Somebody’ forgot. And no one, of course, was able to figure out just who this ‘Somebody’ might be.
Now that the demolition was loaded, and thus became a physical fact, to be dealt with as such, it was discovered that it had not been provided with adequate protection for such an important, and potentially dangerous, installation. In the planning and correlation of the overall defense plan the planners somehow had neglected to provide the men, the guns, or the built-in positions for both, to protect the Makapuu Head demolition. And as a result, when the beach positions and other installations were constructed in October and November, none were constructed for it. Too late it was found that a theoretical enemy patrol in force, marching overland at night from an established beachhead somewhere along the twenty miles of beach in the Kaneohe Valley (which beachhead no one expected the Japanese not to accomplish) could simply come out of the foothills and walk right up the road and capture the demolition easily. All the pillboxes at Makapoo faced out to sea. Men coming up out of them to face this force at their rear would be slaughtered. The five engineers could not be expected to handle such a force. There was, in fact, around this very important and very dangerous strategic demolition nothing but a large hole for the enemy to plunge into. It was to alleviate this tactical blunder that the five-man roadguard from the Makapoo infantry position was created a week after the demolition had been loaded.
Probably, although it must naturally affect the life of the position, this new added element at Makapoo would not have affected Mast or his pistol. But as it turned out it was Mast’s own squad leader who was put in charge of the roadguard by the young lieutenant. He was put in charge, and told to pick his own men, who because it was a suicide mission had to be volunteers. And so it was that one afternoon when Mast was off post and sitting on a rock in the sun because there was no work to do, his squad leader came around to him with a proposition, one which involved his new command, the roadguard.